John McCain is not an introverted shrinking violet

April 30, 2008

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, Karl Rove, who swears he’s not formally advising John McCain on his presidential campaign, suggests the Republican presidential nominee needs to do more to let people know about his personal story.

It came to me while I was having dinner with Doris Day. No, not that Doris Day. The Doris Day who is married to Col. Bud Day, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, fighter pilot, Vietnam POW and roommate of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton.

As we ate near the Days’ home in Florida recently, I heard things about Sen. McCain that were deeply moving and politically troubling. Moving because they told me things about him the American people need to know. And troubling because it is clear that Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history.

When it comes to choosing a president, the American people want to know more about a candidate than policy positions. They want to know about character, the values ingrained in his heart. For Mr. McCain, that means they will want to know more about him personally than he has been willing to reveal.

In this case, Rove isn’t talking about McCain’s rocky history in his personal life, but rather, his military experiences, most notably McCain’s time as a prisoner of war.

In all sincerity, my first thought that Rove was being ironic, perhaps even sarcastic. McCain has been reluctant to talk about his past? He’s been too “private” to highlight his military experiences?

I know Rove tries to keep up on current events, but what race has he been watching?

It started in September, with one of the first McCain TV ads of the fall, featuring a young McCain being interviewed in a Hanoi prison.

Interviewer: How old are you?

John McCain: Thirty one.

Interviewer: What is your rank in the army?

McCain: Lt. Commander in the Navy. … hit by either missile or anti-aircraft fire, I’m not sure which. And the plane continued straight down and I ejected and broke my leg and both arms.

Interviewer: And your official number?

McCain: 624787

The viewer hears the announcer say, “One man sacrificed for his country.”

It led to another ad based on McCain’s favorite scripted debate sound-bite.

“A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend one million dollars on the Woodstock concert museum. Now my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was, I was tied up at the time.”

In mid-December, McCain completely gave up on subtlety:

“One night, after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding me, easing my pain.

“On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas.”

About a month ago, the McCain campaign released its first general-election ad — one-fourth of which was interrogation footage taken while McCain was a prisoner of war.

All of this was followed by a “biographical tour” earlier this month, during which McCain highlighted his family history, with an emphasis on their military service.

And all of this was followed by campaign videos spotlighting McCain’s experiences growing up.

If McCain is one of the “most private individuals to run for president in history,” I really don’t want to see the extroverted candidates.

I think the telling aspect of McCan’ts personal story that illuminates this campaign is that he came back from Vietnam to the wife who had stayed married to him all those years and raised his kids, and promply divorced her to marry Cindy the beer heiress and run for political office on her money.

Nothing else seems to compare in importance.

  • This strikes me as classic Rove. This fellow prisoner can say absolutely anything, and there can be no one to dispute it. Expect some great stories that no one had ever heard before. It reminds me of how Bush portrayed himself as a Christian. Remember how God told him he should be president. We’ll never know, but my guess is it was the three wierd sisters from MacBeth.

  • No footage of the propaganda that McCain made for his captors I bet. Wouldn’t that make a good ad…

    I’m adamantly against torture because it makes people say and do what they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do, to no good purpose. However, since Republicans believe so much in the value of torture and the “good information” that they get when they use it, the tape would be fair game. If if makes the American people understand that the fruits of toture are horrific, that is all well and good too.

  • A brief over view:

    McCain should be President for what he did 40 years ago as a POW.
    What he has done in the past 10-20 years as Senator is irrelevant?

    Bush had a “mis-spent youth” drinking heavily into his 40s until his wife threatened divorce but those years were off limits in 2000 and 2004? Only his previous 8 years as governor of Texas counted?

    How wonderfully selective is the Repub outlook.

  • If Rove isn’t formally advising the McCain campaign, then who is paying for his trip to interview McCain POW roommates, and is he just doing that out of the goodness of his heart??? Not that black heart!

  • Hey, if McBush picked up Rude-Ee as VP, they could sound like a beer commercial:
    POW – 9/11 !
    POW ! – 9/11 !!
    POW !! – 9/11 !!!

    Just a thought….

  • surely you know why Rove is saying that? It’s calculated to focus attention on the war hero narrative. A modest self-effacing, would never exploit his heroic experiences kind of hero. Doesn’t matter if it squares with the facts. What one thing in the marketing and packaging of GWB (masterminded by Rove) had any basis in reality? Reality is their enemy.

  • Lance, you failed to mention the part where the heroic McCain cheated on his first wife.

    I’m guessing Karl Rove wants Saint McCain to remain private about that.

  • How many shrinking violets do you know who routinely scream obscenities at their friends, and call their wives “cunts”, right in front of other people?

    Just wondering.

    …At one point, Cindy [McCain] playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day…

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/07/report-mccains-profane-ti_n_95429.html?page=4

  • The man who brought us Purple Heart bandages is going all gooey over a vet.

    Gag.

    If McCain were a Democrat (if he had switched parties and run with Kerry) you can bet your last cent that Rove would have rounded up a bunch of guys to say McCainiac had beaten his fellow POWs between card games with their captors.

    Oh wait, he got McCane with the black love child.

    Karl Rove, the hooker with a heart of plutonium.

  • Re #9,

    That reminds me of the joke about Chelsea. It was worse when you heard it than the descriptions implied.

    My God, but this guy is a f**king Cad!

  • “John McCain is not an introverted shrinking violet”

    – Unlikely Blog Post Headline of the Year 2008

  • Steve Benen claims McCain is not shy about touting his biography — but ads Benen cites were produced by Campaign, not McCain, fails to point out McCain was reading a script rather than using own words.

  • McCain’s military history is actually terrible other than his time as a prisoner of war. It sounds like Rove is really concerned with setting the narrative for those years so the truth doesn’t come out.

  • Don’t forget about McCain and Hillary’s moronic plan for a highway-repairing and a bridge-repairing summer holiday. Funny how these two war-mongering right-wingers seem to almost be in lockstep these days…

  • Why don’t McCain and Hillary simply ask the greedy oil companies to cut their prices a little this summer and give a little relief to American drivers? Oh, no, that would be treading on sacred ground: the Corporate American Profit System…

  • A couple of months ago, I wrote a much-criticized Daily Kos diary about Cindy McCain. I pointed out that Cindy was a drug addict when she brought two infants home from Bangladesh.

    Today, Rove hailed Cindy as a heroine and commended John McCain’s administrative assistant, Wes Gullett, for adopting baby #2. Pardon me for being cynical but did the Gullets adopt the baby for political expediency?

    Gullett, after managing McCain’s 1992 campaign, went on to become Arizona governor Fife Symington’s chief of staff, a spot he wouldn’t have gotten without help from a grateful John McCain. Gullet is now a McCain campaign advisor.

    I calculated that Cindy spent four months each year out of seven away from her own toddler-aged children while she circled the globe on behalf of her “charity. For four of those years, she was addicted to drugs. From what I have read, her charity was set up to promote the McCains more than anything else.

    Cindy announced today that she is writing a book that will be published in September. While she readily acknowledges her drug addiction, she never links it with her trip to Bangladesh and bringing home Baby Bridget. I suspect that she won’t link the two in her book either.

  • Apparently we should have elected Audie Murphy instead of Eisenhower after world War II.

  • The problem, perhaps, is that McCain’s POW story isn’t seared into the national consciousness. The media doesn’t portray middle America standing agape at the visage of this former soldier and nodding sagely at his suggestions that we need to stay at war for 100 to 1000 years. College students don’t have posters of John McCain in chains on their dorm walls. ‘Ordinary’ Americans are not enacting McCain’s imprisonment in street theater displays of affection. No one, as yet, has borne the stigmata of John McCain.

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